


the passion and pain will keep you alive someday

by vexedcer



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (its only really brief at the end tho), Getting Together, Hair, Hair Kink, Haircuts, M/M, Post CA:TWS, also bucky says fuck you to gender norms, and calling out people who treat thor like a baby in a super models body, the whole thing is about buckys hair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 22:15:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1874445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vexedcer/pseuds/vexedcer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before the war, Bucky’s hair was short; tight, uniform. Sometimes the back was a little uneven from when Steve had to cut it, small hands guiding the scissors gently, snip snip snip. </p><p>After he fell, he was strapped to a barbers chair, but they didn’t cut his hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the passion and pain will keep you alive someday

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work in the fandom, hi nice to met you all.
> 
> The title is from The Great Escape by P!nk, which partially inspired this fic.
> 
> Rating is Teen and Up because of slight pre-smut and swearing.

Before the war, Bucky’s hair was short; tight, uniform. Sometimes the back was a little uneven from when Steve had to cut it, small hands guiding the scissors gently, _snip snip snip_.

During the war, it grew out, longer than he was comfortable with. It would fall across his forehead, one single curl that he would push away, only for it to desperately spring back out. Steve would cut it when they had time, the stretch between missions, between HYDRA bases, the time between dinner and lights out, his hands still gentle even though they were much larger than before.

After he fell, he was strapped to a barbers chair, but they didn't cut his hair.

+

Rehabilitation had been a long and fraught road, for both Bucky and Steve. There were so many milestones as well as setbacks, and Steve had been at his side every step of the way.

The first time they asked about his hair, he’d said no.

The second time he said yes. He really thought he could do it, he really did.

Barbers chairs didn’t have metal to encase his head, barbers chairs didn’t have straps that restricted him, barbers chairs were not what had hurt him; those had been things that dared to even call themselves human.

But upon entering the small salon used by agents on undercover missions, he couldn’t. His senses were overwhelmed by an onslaught of images, of pain burning up his spine and down his present limbs, of struggling wrists against cracking leather of the re-purposed barbers chair.

To put it simply; he freaked out and had to be neutralised (or, for want of a better word, tranq'd).

They didn’t ask a third time.

+

Upon Bucky’s release from SHIELD’s unhomely custody, him and Steve attempted to move into an old Brooklyn apartment; of course, when Tony Stark caught wind of this, he was having none of it.

Apparently, you fight demi-gods and space aliens with a guy once, and he dedicates a whole floor of his multi storey tower to you.

Bucky had to admit; the constant surveillance and overuse of the stars and stripes was almost worth the look on Steve’s face when the elevator pinged open. Almost.

+

Time passed; his hair grew longer; he settled.

He was part of the team much more than anyone could have ever expected. Where as they had all thought his presence would throw a spanner into the groups’ dynamics, he fit in like he was a missing bolt; working without but smoother with.

He trained on the shooting range with Clint, each expanding the other’s knowledge on weaponry; he learned to bake with Bruce, revelling in the tranquillity of clinking bowls and the smell of rising sponge; he bickered and talked metal arms with Tony; him and Natasha sparred; and on the times that Thor visited, they all crowded around the crescent couch in what was quickly becoming the communal floor to educate the three uneducated in the current pop culture of a little planet called Earth.

And him and Steve were back to how they had always been. Fond admiration, affectionate insults and undiluted sexual tension (yes, Tony, he may be old, but he wasn’t fucking blind).

His hair grew longer, and he was perfectly happy for it to remain that way.

+

His hair got so long that it was starting to be a hassle. It was falling in soft ringlets to above where his ribs concaved into his slim hips. He’d been pulling it into a ponytail on missions, and letting it hang loosely, curtaining his face as he meandered around the tower.

Tony was the one to approach the subject

And by approach, he meant compare him to a moulting cat.

“I mean, it’s everywhere! And I bet Steve’s the one picking it out of the shower drain every morning. You need a haircut. I know this great guy, he has a barber’s shop not far-”

“No. No barbers,” Bucky bit out. It may be a small nuisance, but he’d rather it over sitting back in one of those chairs, leaning back, baring his unprotected neck to a stranger. He also ignored the jab about him and Steve. Tony seemed to think they were together, when they really, heartbreakingly weren’t.

“Why not? I trust the guy, he’s not about to stab you in the neck with a pair of scissors -” Tony was silenced by Bucky’s glare.

“No.”

Tony shrugged, downing the rest of the whiskey in his glass.

+

**  
  
**

Ever since that day in the school yard, when Bucky swaggered into the fist fight and sucker punched the bully, who was standing menacingly over Steve’s hunched body, right on the nose, Steve had trusted Bucky.

Ever since Steve took the wrap for Bucky, after the nuns had converged on them, Bucky trusted him.

They were nine.

+

“Will you cut my hair?”

Steve was startled by the voice. He regularly forgot that Bucky was a master assassin, completely silent like a shadow and deadly like a venomous snake waiting to pounce.

“Okay.”

+

“How much do you want me to cut off?” Bucky stared at Steve’s unsure face in the reflection of the bathroom mirror.

“To my shoulders.”

Steve nodded, wrapping the towel tighter around his friend’s upper body. He picked up the scissors, raising them slowly to Bucky’s hair, giving him time to change his mind.

He closed his eyes, letting out a shaky breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding when he heard the first _snip, snip, snip_ of the shears.

“Buck -”

“I trust you.”

+

When he opened his eyes, he gazed at his image in the glass. His hair was curling in gentle waves, the locks tumbling softly to his shoulders, before halting in a relatively straight edge. Dark brown littered his towel-clad shoulders, and covered the floor around the stool he was sitting on. Steve hovered behind him, at his shoulder.

“What d’you think?” Steve was nervously chewing his plush bottom lip, meeting his eyes in the mirror in front of them.

Bucky’s face split into a grin. “Not bad for a punk.”

Steve’s answering smile was dazzling. “Jerk.”

“I’m starved.” Bucky stretched both his flesh and metal arms above his head. “You go make lunch and I’ll take care of this,” he said, gesturing to the hair on the floor.

Steve nodded, a fond smile still tugging at the corners of his lips, before ducking out of the bathroom.

“Hey, JARVIS, anyone in this place got a broom?”

+

Tony liked to joke about Natasha braiding Bucky’s hair, but he was surprised when he saw Bucky sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the couch. Natasha was sitting behind him on the cushions, twirling the tendrils into a pretty arrangement.

Steve sat at the other end of the couch, drawing the scene in front of him, his face pinched in concentration.

None of the three looked up, so Tony left them too it.

+

It became apparent that Bucky’s hair was a thing.

They all had _things_. Each had something the media was reverent about, was unholily obsessed with in relation to them. Tony had robots, Steve had art, Thor had his misunderstandings of Midgardian technology (Asgard was so much more advanced than Earth, but most people -cough, cough, Tumblr- put it down to the fact that Thor was “a cute little puppy”; he was much more than that, but nobody could dispute that Thor was adorable).

Bucky liked to do his hair in all sorts of styles; plaiting and braiding, buns, headbands (Twitter had a field day when Bucky wore a flower crown). He wore it back out of his face, pulled high into one of those round doughnut bun things, sleek and tidy, when he went to the many, many Stark Industries fundraisers (he never stayed long, the crowds were like barber’s chairs; they mirrored battlefields, with perfume stinging his nose instead of the tang of blood and sweat).

+

Press conferences were something that came with the Saving-The-World thing.

At his first one, Bucky had been uncomfortable, but he’d grown accustomed to flashing lights and shouting in a non-battlefield situation.

“Sergeant Barnes, you’ve recently received a lot of media attention with your hairstyles and accessories; tell us, do you have a personal stylist or hairdresser?” A young blonde reporter directed the question towards him.

He could practically hear Steve’s grin from his left as he answered.

“No, I don’t. I do it all myself, or Natasha helps me,” He gave a sideways glance down the table where she was sitting, an amused smile on her face.

“Do you cut it yourself too?” asked another reporter, with dark hair and cherry red lips.

“No, Steve cuts it for me.” 

“Why not just have to a regular hairdresser do it?” shouted someone from the back of the room.

“I’d rather have it done by someone I trust to come at me with sharp things.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the same fond smile Steve wore after he cut his hair for the first time.

+

Bucky hadn’t had sex since during the war, with some lonely barmaid in some French village he’d never even tried to remember, and he was itching to get off, to get someone else off, to be intimate with someone.

And it was clearly becoming a problem because he was rock hard, cuddled against Steve’s chest.

He’d crawled into his bed sometime during the night; his nightmares were flashes of red and of silver steel, of cracking, breaking, screaming under his hands, of pain, followed by numbness, coldness. Of  a teenage girl with tear tracks, holding onto a gold cross around her neck with one hand, urgently alternating between saying Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s under her breath. He didn’t even care, when his metal hand pressed the symbol into her throat as he strangled her.

Steve didn’t even hesitate to let him bury his stubbled face in the junction of his neck and shoulder, making comforting noises, rubbing a large hand down the centre of his back as the shaking subsided.

He’d been too exhausted to move, so Steve bundled the blankets around them, like they did in Brooklyn when Steve was sick or the heating was broken. He listened to the beating of his best friend’s heart, the regular thumping under his hair-covered ear lulling him to sleep.

And here they were.

Steve started to wake up, his muscles tensing and relaxing languidly under the hand Bucky had on his side. The hands on his back tightened when Bucky tried to move away.

He looked up at Steve, eyes wide with panic, fearing Steve’s rejection, but in his face, he only found the same fond smile of his first haircut and the press conference, along with shy lust. He moved to press their lips together in a dry kiss, before pressing his tongue to the seam. He swallowed Steve’s soft moan, catching the plush bottom lip between his teeth.

Steve’s hands snaked up from Bucky’s back, to fist at the base of his skull, tangled in the locks there. Bucky let out a full-on keen as he tugged lightly, electricity sparking under his skin.

Steve pulled back to look at him, his face filled with something similar to awe. “That's new.”

“So’s this,” Bucky replied before leaning back in for another kiss.

=

It wasn’t until one day, when he was reading some angry conservative Christian letter in the newspaper (“Who the fuck even reads newspaper any more?” “Shut the fuck up, Clint, I do.”) about how him doing his hair in a typically feminine fashion was abominable, that he realised he didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought of him.

He had Steve, and he had his hair ribbons and Youtube tutorials if Natasha wasn’t there to help him, and he had his pseudo-family and, really, anyone who had a problem with that could suck his dick.

(Figuratively, of course; only Steve could do that.)


End file.
